A
silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis...called
together [his fellow silversmiths and] workmen in related trades, and
said: Men, you know we receive a good income from this business. And
you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large
numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province
of Asia. He says that man-made gods are no gods at all. There is danger
not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple
of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited, and the goddess herself,
who is worshipped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will
be robbed of her divine majesty. When they heard this, they were furious
and began shouting: Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! (Acts 19:
24-28)

Built
around 550 BCE, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world. As this extract from the New Testament shows,
early Christianity came into conflict with the worship of this highly
regarded goddess. The history of Christianity is full of incidents where
local deities and shrines were absorbed into the new religion, and it
can hardly be seen as coincidence that it was at the Council of Ephesus
in 431 CE that the title of Theotokos—‘Mother
of God’—was officially conferred upon Mary.

In
451, when the Emperor asked the patriarch of Jerusalem to bring her relics
to Constantinople to be enshrined in the capitol, the patriarch replied
that there were no such relics, that “Mary had died in the presence
of the apostles; but her tomb, when opened later...was found empty and
so the apostles concluded that the body was taken up into heaven.”

Although
both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches commemorate
Mary’s passage into heaven on 15 August, the festival is called
the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Roman Catholics
and the Dormition* of the Theotokos by the Orthodox.
A common subject of paintings in the middle ages, the idea of the assumption
of Mary into heaven after her death is first expressed in narratives of
the fifth and sixth centuries; however this was not formally defined as
a dogma until 1950, when Pope Pius XII proclaimed: “The Immaculate
Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her
earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven.”